I’ve been asked lately about my last newsletter and my “attack” on ephedrine. After all, if you can buy it over the Internet it must be okay, right? Well, call it what you wish, but I feel I have good reason for my belief about its dangers.
Back in 1999, I had a member of my fitness center in Lee’s Summit, MO that was using ephedrine tablets in his efforts to lose weight. He was a 32-year old, healthy, 215 pound father of two young children. He had a great job, a wonderful wife that would do anything for him. He had everything to live for.
I pleaded with him to not abuse the “miracle in a bottle” pills. Even though we talked about the many serious side effects of ephedrine he ignored me and continued taking the “answer” to his problem. He averaged four tablets, or 100 mg, per day.
“It won’t happen to me,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”
The occasional headaches didn’t faze him. It was a small price to pay for losing the weight that he felt was so necessary to rid himself of. After all, he would feel like he was in control of his life if he lost the weight. “It’s just something I thought I needed to deal with,” he would say later in broken speech. The mechanism for ephedrine-induced headaches includes narrowing of the blood vessels to the brain. Add in the severely restricted diet he was on and…
Six months later he had a massive ephedrine-induced stroke. Today, nine years later, and he still has not recovered from the brain damage. He experienced a permanent disability that interferes with his walking, speech, vision, understanding, reasoning, and memory. The loss of function to the left side of his body remains. He can no longer take care of himself.
And I’ve had to live with the thought that maybe I didn’t do enough to prevent it from happening.
Now, here it is nine years later and I feel like I’m reliving the same thing all over again. This time though, it is a person that is much closer to me… one of the best friends I’ve ever had in my life.
Another tragedy that can be avoided.
And this time it is a beautiful, young woman with her entire life in front of her who is at times taking twice as much as the man I described above.
Let’s put that in perspective… In 2001, NFL All-Pro outside lineman, 27-year old, 335 pound Korey Stringer of the Minnesota Vikings, in the prime of his career, died of a heart attack while taking five ephedrine tablets per day. My friend is a woman one-third the size of Korey Stringer and she told me she is taking as much as 6-8 pills per day! The standard recommended daily dosage for ephedrine usage is only 50 mg, or 2 tablets per day.
And this time she sought me out asking to help her because she knows she needs the help. She clearly acknowledged the seriousness of the problem. “I know how serious it is or I wouldn’t have told anybody in the first place,” she wrote to me just a month ago. And then just like above, she has completely ignored my pleas. And just like above, she has completely shut me out.
This time I felt a responsibility to say something to others that she feels are close to her – two supposed friends and her mother. I had to make a difficult decision: try to protect her secret or try to protect her health. She feels I betrayed her trust in me.
Her so-called ‘friends,’ family and co-workers are doing nothing to help her. As a matter of fact, their lack of responsibility only support her abuse of herself. They’ve witnessed her dropping a significant amount of weight in a ridiculously short period of time but do nothing to intervene. And she refuses to stop it because that’s how tightly the disease controls her. In her eyes I’m completely wrong for trying to help at any expense. I’m a bad person for trying to do what she actually asked from me – HELP HER. And by trying to do what she asked me to do, and what she needs someone to do for her, my halo became my noose.
And the biggest problem with the situation is that the ephedrine is NOT making her lose weight. The weight loss has to do only with the severely restricted diet she is maintaining. She is barely eating. She is abusing first-generation meth (ephedrine is the main ingredient in meth and its central nervous system actions are more potent per unit and longer-acting than those of amphetamines) and not eating enough calories to maintain sufficient hormone and electrolyte function, much less valuable muscle tissue which controls her metabolism. It’s no wonder she is dropping weight so fast. She is killing herself with her addiction.
At this point exercise is even harmful to her since the very process of exercising entails breaking down of muscle tissue which she cannot possibly rebuild unless she were to start eating sufficient calories to at least maintain existing muscle tissue, and she stops the ephedrine usage which also contributes to loss of muscle tissue through the release of cortisol. Cortisol damages healthy tissues.
“I’ll be fine,” she thinks. “I’m doing better than I have in a long time,” she claims. “You’re just fine,” her ‘friends’ tell her. “You look great,” they say to her as some knowingly, and others unwittingly, are simply fueling her obsession, her addiction. The few who actually know of the problem simply do not have the fortitude to do the right thing and try to get her the help she very much needs. It’s easier to do nothing than to exhibit the courage and determination to be a responsible friend. Those traits require a moral fiber that only true friends reveal.
When a person’s health, and possibly life, is at risk there are no stupid ideas, only stupid people who do nothing. (It’s my nature to rebel against stupidity.)
And so her circle of influence becomes individuals who enable her habit, even encourage it, instead of the ones who care for her well-being.
In the meantime she has been suffering several health issues for some time now that are clearly direct side effects of ephedrine abuse.
The occasional headaches aren’t fazing her. Again, some are worse than others. The moderate to severe abdominal pains concern her, but not enough to stop the abuse. Her irregular periods also concern her, but she continues in spite of it. Having occasional problems passing urine isn’t throwing up a huge red flag either. Mood swings from severely depressed to almost euphoric at times. If she were to decide to have a child the chances of birth defects are extremely high with prolonged ephedrine abuse. Not to mention the irreparable damage being done to her heart. Some symptoms are more severe than others, but to her it is all a small price to pay for losing the weight. These are all symptoms of ephedrine abuse. Sure, she is going to a doctor about some of these issues but fails to tell what she is really doing because she knows any competent medical professional would want her to stop immediately and she would feel like she lost control. Is it any wonder the doctor(s) haven’t figured out the problem?
And then there are the side effects of ephedrine that no one speaks of.
Ephedrine abuse has been clinically proven to affect mental health and often times results in permanent psychosis due to the fact that it permanently damages the adrenals which causes permanent behavioral damage.
When over-stimulated, the adrenal glands also become the major source of the sex hormones circulating throughout the body in women. These hormones themselves have a whole host of physical, emotional and psychological effects. Every athlete knows that steroids (adrenal hormones) affect muscular strength and size. In the case of women, the result is irreversible virilization – they start to look like a man.
Overuse or abuse of ephedrine will quickly, easily and effectively burn out the adrenals.
The irony of it all? She didn’t need to change a damn thing. She had one of the most perfectly proportioned, athletic and sexy physiques I’ve seen…the legs of a runner and the upper body of a swimmer. Muscular, yet feminine. When people asked me what I thought the ideal female physique should look like, I used to point directly to her.
Again, someone reached out to me for help then rejected it. And again, I’m watching someone systematically destroy their own life. Again, someone with everything to live for is flirting with disaster. And again, I feel helpless to protect someone from themselves, someone that I care for so much.
Yes, other underlying conditions exist that would cause an otherwise intelligent, rational person to do something so damaging to themselves, but abusing ephedrine only exasperates the problem.
Ephedrine abuse is a serious addiction. It is no different than any other drug addiction or emotional disease. The person feels like they are in control of their life when the truth is that the addiction, the disease, actually controls them. The quest to lose weight, to look better, becomes so obsessive that some people will do whatever it takes – at the risk of accidentally killing themselves – to feel like they are in control of their situation.
But, honestly. What is healthy about that? Are they really in control? Or out of control?
Ephedrine abuse destroys lives. Ephedrine abuse kills people.
What the hell. Life is short, right? Live dangerously, die young and leave a good-looking corpse. And another amazing human being that refused my help is committing a slow, deliberate suicide.
THAT’S my problem with ephedrine.
